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Macro-post #4: Our Impact.

On Thursday, November 19, 2020, my practicum group and I officially ended our practicum by presenting our work to our class. With the help of our preceptor and owner of On Target Preparedness, I feel we have fulfilled our duty of meeting our assigned competencies and deliverables given by our professor (Dr. Tillman). Below are the assigned competencies, deliverables, and ways we tackled each task.

Deliverables:

1. Design educational material and activities related to COVID-19 for distribution to Latinx/Hispanic communities in Harnett and surrounding counties

2. Collect assessment data related to the Latinx/Hispanic COVID-19 outreach efforts from various stakeholders (health departments, advocacy orgs, nonprofits, healthcare systems, state/federal

agencies, etc.)

3. Create an advocacy campaign promoting improved emergency response outreach to Hispanic/Latinx communities.

Competencies:

R1. Differentiate the impacts of social determinants of health that contribute to health disparities in rural communities as compared with urban communities

F2. Select quantitative and qualitative data collection methods appropriate for a given public health context

F7. Assess population needs, assets, and capacities that affect communities' health

F14. Advocate for political, social, or economic policies and programs that will improve health in diverse populations

F19. Communicate audience-appropriate public health content, both in writing and through oral presentation

For deliverable one, we created a Spanish and English COVID-19 informational brochure that highlighted the virus's symptoms, the importance of following safety regulations, local resources, state resources, the importance of wearing a mask, and testing sites. We decided to print more Spanish brochures than English because our target was the Hispanic/Latinx communities at our tabling events. We recruited undergraduate students from Campbell University's Hispanic Association to help us communicate efficiently who are not proficient in English. For this part of our project, Michelle and I tackled the competency F19 because we communicated with our target audience in both writing and Spanish. 

My practicum group member Sophia came up with the idea of creating COVID Care Kits, which was an excellent idea because we learned that many members of the Hispanic and Latinx population did not have the proper equipment to fight the pandemic. Many did not have a reusable mask, disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer, hand soap, and more. Although we ran into some doubt from our preceptor regarding creating the kits, we believed in our teammate and helped make it happen. We met early in the morning to go to local businesses in Montgomery County to inform the owners of our goals and asked for any donations towards the events. Initially, we did not think many people would have donated, but that was not our reality. The community was very supportive of our efforts; therefore, they donated gracefully. With our care kits, we created a bilingual COVID Coloring Book for the children to understand why it is necessary to wash their hands, explain our dangerous germs, and more. We made over 200 COVID Care Kits to give to the Hispanic/Latinx population in Montgomery County. Additionally, the Public Health Department gave us 500 reusable wipes to give out at our last tabling event. I believe this was definitely a part of our efforts to create a campaign to improve emergency response outreach to the Hispanic and Latinx populations in Montgomery County (competency F7).

Mason was the group member in charge of the tabling events. I'm glad we selected Mason because he got the job done. He contacted the two businesses where we hosted the tabling events with the help of Michelle because La Cosecha owner is a Spanish speaker. Our tabling event overall brought every deliverable together to meet our goals. At our first tabling event we noticed that many people were not wearing their mask, which was not surprising since we hypothesized that they did not have the resources.Our tabling event was hosted at a Hispanic market. We really touched many people from or targeted population. Some were sharing their stories of how they contracted the disease, how they had to pay for COVID testing, and stories of their families back home in their home country. It was definely and eye opener and really made my experience a member of OTP worth every minute. Our second tabling event was interesting. Because it was hosted at the local flea market we encounter alot of track and ended earlier than the last event. We engaged with a variety of demographic with the community. After our first event, we were given instructions to ask the people about the amount of help or information they received from their local health department. Over 80% of the people said they “did not hear anything” from the Montgomery Health Department. This was surprising because the department stated that they gave over 10,000 mask to the citizen. Being the public health students that we are we hypothesized that the department was not successfully reaching the Hispanic/Latinx populations! Tragic! 

Overall, I’m grateful to have this experience to work hands-on in a community and make a small but mighty impact on the lives of others. I grew closer to my group members and learned the importance of working with others who are different. I was grateful to be the leader of ensuring our brochures got to the Montgomery County School District. Our brochure was given to over 3,000 young scholar and out of that 1,000 were Hispanic. I feel that my group has come a long way. We experienced some setbacks, but we remained motivated and got the job done. I hope OTP continues our efforts and impact many others through this pandemic.

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Spanish COVID-19 Brochures

In class I learned that rural Hispanics face many barriers to healthcare. One of those barriers include language barriers. After conducting research and spending time visiting several public health departments across North Carolina. We realize there were not many Spanish written resources available for some counties. We decided that it would be best to create a Spanish brochure covering the symptoms of COVID-19, local and statewide testing sites, how to properly social distances, and the importance of wearing a mask.

Special recognition to my practicum group member @mgvazquez1026​ for creating the brochure in Spanish. We couldn't do it without her.

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Bilingual Coloring Book for Children.

It is vital to inform children of what is right and wrong. It is even better to do it in away that captures their attention. However, not all Hispanic/Latinx children can speak English, therefore, we created a coloring book inn English and Spanish. The book informs children the importance of washing their hands, the impact of germs and so much more. I personally believe this book was one of our tabling event highlights. The smiles on the children's faces will forever be one of the most rewarding experiences as a member of On Target Preparedness. 

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Donations for COVID-19 Care Kits

One of my practicum group and I deliverables included creating a COVID-19 Care-Kit to distribute to the Hispanic/Latinx communities in Montgomery County. On Saturday, October 31, 2020 we drive to Biscoe, NC as a group to ask local business for donations of wipes, hand sanitizers, gloves, mask, soap and anything to help fight the pandemic. With grace, many businesses supported our cause and sent donations. One company even gave us a business card. Also Campbell University’s pharmaceutical department made us 100 hand sanitizer! 

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4 of 5 municipalities of Montgomery County

Star, NC is another community in Montgomery County we conducted research on. We have decided not to focus on Star, NC because there isn't a large Hispanic population. 

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3 of 5 municipalities in Montgomery County.

Mount Gilead, NC is one of the municipalities we are not focusing on due to the lack of Hispanic population (0%) is this community.

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2 of 5 municipalities of Montgomery County

Biscoe, NC has a Hispanic population over 60%. This is another community in Montgomery County we want to focus on reaching with our deliverables.

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1 of 5 municipalities in Montgomery County.

Candor, NC has a Hispanic population over 62%.  Over 46% of the Hispanic population lives in poverty.

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Macro-post #3-Assess population needs, assets, and capacities that affect communities’ health.

My practicum group and I are feeling motivated and proud of our progress. As I mentioned earlier, we will be working very closely with Montgomery County to help spread awareness of ways to help keep the Hispanic population in Candor, NC, and Biscoe, NC. With our ideas, I feel that we can make a significant impact on their lives. In the beginning, we were brainstorming ideas and ways we could reach out to the Hispanic communities. I believe we came up with great ideas.

(The beginning of October)

Ideas of what we could do to reach the Hispanic communities regarding COVID-19:

Educate workers outside of working hours about their work environment protocols

Reach out to Spanish radio stations across NC

Create COVID-19 Kits

Potentially set up a table on a Saturday or Sunday with information regarding COVID-19 and resources

Place flyers at common grocery stores, Spanish markets, flea markets, retail shops

Have educational material readily available at familiar places like Food Lion, not just Spanish stores.

Inform them about Contact tracing8. Inform them about quarantine and isolation protocols

Information about the transmission percentage of wearing masks vs. not

Local testing centers

Business cards with informational material

Reach out to primary schools to give informational brochures to students as a way to reach their parents

Above are ideas we brainstormed and record at the beginning of October. Now, we are at the end of October and have finalized our ways of getting our deliverables out to others, specifically in Montgomery County.

(The End of October)

Finalized deliverables:

Leader: Michelle/Shantavia (foremost leaders) Mason and Sophia will still contribute

Brochure (6 Sections)

Title Page (Bilingual)

Resources (Local and state)

Products you can buy to stay safe (gators, hand sanitizer, wipes)

Quarantine and Isolation protocols (and covid symptoms)

Handwashing & Social Distancing

Leader: Sophie

COVID-19 Care Kit

Disposable Masks (or bandanas, cotton to make their own at home mask Hand sanitizer

Wipe packets

Bags

Leader: Mason

Table Event (November 7th/ November 14th)

Leader: Shantavia

School Outreach

Pass out Brochures to local schools to give students who could take a brochure home with them and share with their parents.

Leader: Michelle

Reach out to local Hispanic/Latinx radio stations

Ask what they are doing to promote information regarding COVID-19 and ways to stay safe.

Promote local resources such as health department and testing sites

Could email a pdf version of the brochure that we make so they could post it to social media and website.

As you can tell, we have many ways to ensure that COVID-19 information reaches hundreds of families. In class and throughout our research, we noticed that the language barrier was shared among Hispanic patients' inadequate healthcare. Our primary focus is to ensure that our deliverables cater to Spanish speakers, which is why we are creating a bilingual brochure.

Although we have are facing some milestones, we are still pushing forward the best way we can. Mason reached out to local Walmarts in Candor and Biscoe and was told that we could not host our table events there due to their COVID-19 regulations at the moment. However, we found two Spanish markets. We are hoping to set up our events there. Thankfully, Michelle is a native Spanish speaker, so she will call to communicate with the market owners. As our school outreach deliverable leader, I couldn't decide if I should reach out to the schools directly or to the school district. After talking to Mr. David, we decided it would be best to reach out to the school district. Then, the school board can review the brochure and approve of it. Also, to continue to distance properly socially, we will not go to the schools; instead, we will have the district deliver the brochures to the schools for the educator to pass out to their children.

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Exciting News: Montgomery County

I have some exciting news to share. After conducting research on the impact of COVID-19 on the Hispanic/Latinx communities in North Carolina, our preceptor (Dr.David) told us that Montgomery County is interested in our work. As a group we are now moving forward to address COVID-19 cases in Montgomery targeting the Hispanic population. 

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Macro-post #2

In my last post, I shared that my practicum group was investigating the population of Hispanics in rural counties across North Carolina to the Hispanic population infected with the coronavirus. We decided to dig a little deeper and discovered the top industries in those communities, which helped us create our final hypothesis. In the beginning, we hypothesized "the high rates of COVID-19 cases amongst the Hispanic/Latinx communities were due to language barriers, harsh working conditions that prevent proper social distancing and more." Our previous hypothesis was almost accurate. We noticed that many rural counties experiencing the rates of cases were all highly economically driven by industries like manufacturing, agricultural, retail, and construction. We identified those four industries repeatedly as the most common industries and most specialized for citizens in those counties. After reading several articles, we learned that many Hispanic farmworkers often work in the heat and decide to wear a mask properly or inhale fresh air. The touching of their facial mask repeatedly after often using the same equipment as their co-workers could be dangerous. They are potentially increasing their exposure to the virus. This is the same for retail and manufacturing workers. Due to their work conditions, it makes it difficult for them to follow the CDC guidelines properly. We also feel that the policies are not heavily enforced by management for many reasons. As stated in my previous post, we selected a total of 30 counties across North Carolina, which all had different populations. In a screenshot from our group's document, you can see the highlight counties that we believed had a significantly more significant percentage of Hispanic COVID-19 cases than the Hispanic/Latinx population in that county. There was s total of 9 counties that we highlighted. In our next step, we added an asterisk to some of the already highlighted counties so that the counties with severe or extreme cases could stand out as we continue analyzing. We concluded that the impact of COVID-19 cases within the Hispanic population was a statewide problem, not just Harnett County. Personally, there are other rural counties with more tremendous hardships that Hartnett County from the data we collected. Next, we wanted to know more about each county, such as the industries driving these counties, which could potentially explain the reasons for the high cases. We created a chart to list all the significant counties from the previous step described above, identified economic industries most common in those counties, most specialized industries, and the highest paying jobs. We discovered that manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and retail were common industries. These industries environments can make it challenging to social distances because these are jobs that do not have the option to virtually complete. Therefore, making social distancing difficult. Additionally, the working conditions make it hard to wear a mask to prevent the spread of germs faithfully. As a result, the nature of these jobs makes it hard to wear proper PPE. From the data collected, we concluded that the employment of Hispanics could be a significant cause of higher cases within their population. Initially, we hypothesized that their living conditions were a significant cause of the high cases of COVID-19. However, according to Census, Michelle did some more research, the average number of members per household for the selected counties were 2-3 people, which altered our belief. Maybe their living conditions were not that great of an issue compared to their employment. Although employment is essential, we found other factors as well. Language barriers are an issue for rural Hispanics seeking healthcare access or public health information; thus, it is not different in the case of COVID-19.

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UPDATE FROM WEEK 4

I’m a little behind on my updates regarding my praticum group project. However, my team and I are taking steps to tackle the issues in the hispanic communities across North Carolina. We decided to take things a step further by reseacrching the impact of the Hispanic communities in various counties. Although our primary focus is on rural hispanic communties, we are investigating if the impact of high rates COVID-19 in their communties has more to do with their way of life such as cultural habits as well.

Below is a sneak peak into what we have done so far. We have collected data of small, medium, and large counties in North Carolina to compare the percentage of cases to the Hispanic population. Our next step is to identify the economic force of each county, which will give us an insight on their working conditions.

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Macro-post #1

Greetings everyone! I’m Shantavia Edmonds, a member of  On Target Preparedness 2020 in Lillington, North Carolina along with three others of my classmates (Sophia, Michelle, and Mason). On Tuesday, September 15, 2020 my practicum group met with our preceptor Mr. David who is the owner of On Target Preparedness. Our goal at the moment is to gain a in-depth understanding of why there are higher cases of COVID-19 within the Hispanic/Latinx communities in rural in Harnett County and other rural North Carolina counties. We were encourage to start off by investigating various reasons why the Hispanic community was more susceptible to contracting the Coronavirus. Individually, I began to read many articles, new reports, and listen to interviews. I quickly discovered similar themes amongst all the items I read, such as the Hispanic population often l work in harsh working environments, which prevents them to properly follow the CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus, their living conditions could potentially play a huge role, and language barriers. Despite everyone attempt to obtain data through various contacts, such as the Hartnett County Health Department and the North Carolina Health Department we did not have much to present to Dr. David. However, from the small amount of education we discovered through online databases, we decided that in order to prove our theory of why Hispanics and Latinx communities are being negatively impacted from COVID-19 we need to investigate if this was a Hartnett County issue or a statewide issue. With the help of Mr. David, we came up with the idea to continue our research with new techniques and ideas. Below are a list of items we discussed during our thrid week meeting.

Notes from week three meeting:

Purpose: To understand the situation of the impact of COVID-19 on the Latinx population, to create an assessment, and identify the conflict of why there are higher cases.

Hypothesis: As a result of their closeness and living conditions, the Latinx community may not be able to practice social distancing properly.Goal: Build a campaign or program to help share information regarding a COVID-19 positive outcome impact.

To-do List:

-Gain local data

-Reserch the Hispanic and Latinx community populations.

-Compare and contrast data

-Identify if the problem is a local or state issue

-Reserach what is causes this negative impact

From this brief list of things, you can see that we are striving to obtain information to further our hypothesis so that we can continue to move forward with our project. After this meeting I felt so much better regarding our project. From this meeting we clearly have some task to tackle. Someone has to contact Ainsley Johnson at the Harnett County Health Department regarding data informations about COVID-19 cases, select 10 small, medium, and large counties to fully understand if this is a larger issue, and create a solid hypothesis to present in our next meeting.

As a group we decided to work in groups of two to split the task. Sophia and I are partners and Michelle and Mason are partners. I feel as if our practicum is headed in a good direction. I can't wait to see the impact we will make in the future.

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Team Preparedness is in an early meeting with our preceptor Dr. Hesselmeyer. Throughout the pandemic, many people have been impacted financially, emotionally, mentally, and physically. However, we have noticed the tremendous impact COVID-19 has on the Hispanic community in Harnett County and across the state of NC. As public health scholars, we want to make a difference.

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